Netanyahu to meet on hostage talks Saturday night, as Witkoff seeks to extend ceasefire

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will convene top aides and security chiefs on Saturday night for a situational assessment on the hostage talks in Doha, according to Hebrew media reports.

If no breakthrough is achieved by then, the reports say, Netanyahu will bring his negotiating team home.

Meanwhile, US special envoy Steve Witkoff’s proposal for further hostage releases and an extended ceasefire, as set out during negotiations in Qatar, provides for five living and 10 dead hostages to be returned, Channel 12 reports.

The ceasefire would be extended for a further 42-50 days, and the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza would be resumed.

In the course of the extended ceasefire, discussions would take place on “final summations” — an apparent reference to the end of the war.

Israel, the Channel 12 report says, has demanded that a larger number of living hostages be freed.

Hamas, for its part, presented a demand that the US guarantee that there will be discussions on phase two of the current deal, which provides for the full withdrawal of the IDF and the end of the war.

If the sides cannot reach an agreement on the basis of the new Witkoff proposal, the report says the mediators are expected to push Israel and Hamas toward a smaller interim arrangement, under which a “solitary few” living hostages would be freed and the ceasefire maintained.

The purpose of the smaller arrangement would be to buy more time for negotiations and avoid the complete collapse of the talks and a return to the fighting.

“If there is no progress in the next 48 hours, the Israeli delegation will return to Israel,” it quotes a senior Israeli source as saying.

Channel 12 also says that Israel’s demand for Hamas leaders to go into exile is “off the agenda” given the “stubborn opposition” from Hamas’s leaders in Gaza. It quotes sources in Israel’s negotiating team saying this demand is not going to be raised as an option in the ongoing talks.